AIM

MSN

Website URL

ICQ

Yahoo

Jabber

Skype

Location

Interests

This actually happened today and it was a nice break from all the sad depressing things I've been hearing about lately. So I embellished it a little and made it into a story. lol. Daniel is my tutee.
---------------- Sunlight streamed through the giant windows, filling the room with a warm, cosy glow. Through the glass doors I could see plenty of greenery and small bushes that trembled slightly in the wind. It was a beautiful, peaceful day. I had no way of knowing that it was about to become the darkest day of my life.
‘’Shall we move onto Maths now?’’ I asked Daniel who was studiously ignoring me. I received no response, not that I was expecting one. I blew my nose for the hundredth time wondering if perhaps I should give up and call it a day. Eventually, I closed the textbook in defeat and slipped it into my bag. Once all my books and stationery were packed away, I stood up, ready to leave. This seemed to rouse Daniel.
‘’You can’t leave yet!’’ he exclaimed. Had Daniel decided that perhaps we ought to finish our lesson for the day? No. The reason he wanted me to stay, it turned out, was that there was a ginormous spider on the wall on the way out. It appeared I wasn’t going anywhere. Energised by this new turn of events, Daniel rushed out excitedly only to return with a piece of cardboard and incredibly, deodorant. As he sprayed deodorant all over the cardboard, he explained that there was a method to his madness.
‘’After I’ve sprayed the deodorant on here, I will spray the deodorant at the spider and you will hold this cardboard underneath. The spider will fall onto the cardboard and die,’’ he explained matter of factly. My blocked sinuses were giving me a severe headache and due to this it took me a few seconds to digest what he had just said.
‘’Where exactly did you hear that deodorant is deadly to spiders?’’ I asked wearily, dreaming of taking two Ibuprofen and falling into bed. Daniel assured me that it would do the trick. Being the coward that I am, I refused to be a part of the plan. I stood right back and prepared to watch this murder by gassing. My heart begun to race as he approached the spider; I hoped Daniel was a good aim. He pointed the deodorant at the spider and began to spray. At first nothing happened and we both momentarily relaxed. Then suddenly, the spider started flailing and we both screamed. Although it didn’t quite sound so girly on Daniel given that his voice had recently broken. The spider moved about 10 centimetres to the left while Daniel had somehow appeared next to me, a few metres away.
‘’So much for the deodorant,’’ I smirked. However, Daniel was not one to give up. He grabbed a blue broomstick and gave it to me. Apparently, his new plan involved me smacking the spider with the broom while he sprayed deodorant at it. Daniel was clearly still hung up on the idea of suffocating it to death with anti-perspirant. I flat out refused because in my opinion, the length of the broom was not enough distance between me and the spider. Shaking his head at me in disgust, Daniel grabbed the broom in one hand with the ever present deodorant in his other.
The atmosphere in the room had become tenser if that was even possible. Daniel stood with both his weapons aimed at the spider which he had taken to referring as ‘an agent of Satan’. I did not disagree with him. Just when I thought Daniel was about to bravely attack, he dropped everything and rushed to his laptop. Apparently, appropriate background music was needed to give him a moral boost. The room filled with the sound of the death scene of Captain Kaneda of Icarus II from the movie Sunshine (2007). The soundtrack was perfect for this moment; it was powerful and dominant, dramatic and edgy, yet also underscored with a fragile tone. The music soared, epic, majestic, malevolent and glorious, all at the same time. Daniel asked me to let his family know that he loved them. I promised I would, I could feel my heart in my throat. I was so proud to know this brave boy. Daniel gave me one last determined yet vulnerable look and charged at the spider. I will never forget that moment or what happened next.
The spider exploded into violent motion and began to jump or fly or levitate around as though possessed. Despite this, Daniel did not cower, he chased the damn thing all around the room while I watched from the safety ofthe kitchen island. It was a horrific battle that lasted hours or perhaps seconds- time seemed to stand still. At one point, the demon spider fell behind the table and I could no longer see it. Daniel courageously reached behind the table with the broomstick (and the deodorant) while I timidly ventured out of the kitchen and stood behind him. I thought it was all over. How wrong I was.
Daniel started clearing some room behind the table to try to find the enemy and all of a sudden he let out a cry and leapt back. Unbelievably it was still alive! I raced back to the kitchen, coughing as I inadvertently inhaled the deodorant that saturated the room. He grabbed some kitchen towel and attempted to smother the spider. After a fierce struggle, during which I thought I was going to lose him to the creature, Daniel emerged victorious. As he wrapped the spider up in the tissue, he noticed the aforementioned deodorant-soaked cardboard and his eyes lit up. According to Daniel, it was our responsibility as human beings to ensure that the soul of the demon spider did not leave the spider and enter another to continue wreaking havoc upon humankind. To that end, he insisted that we must burn the body. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but Daniel’s argument was quite compelling. My only recommendation was that we carry out the cremation in the garden so as not to set the house on fire.
That is how it came to pass that 2 hours after arriving at Daniel’s house, I found myself watching the solemn cremation of a devil spider that had attempted to cause corruption and terrorise us. The cardboard containing the corpse wrapped in tissue was soaked in white spirit and set alight in a metal pot in the garden. As I watched the flames flicker and rise,I found myself thinking that I had never imagined that such a thing could happen to me. I was only thankful that I had Daniel there to protect me and resist the evil creature. Admittedly, I was also thinking of the fact that we had just increased CO2 emissions into the atmosphere for no good reason, but that was secondary.
After the last flames died away and all that was left was steaming ashes, I picked up my bag and gave Daniel a sombre nod before leaving. There were no words to describe how the experience had changed both of us forever. I write this now to share with the world what happened in the hopes that writing it out will help me to heal as much as is possible in a situation like this. I hope that people can take away valuable lessons from my ordeal and help to make this world a better place. One without demon spiders. Thank you.